Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
NORA
The man standing in front of me is not what the profile described.
The profile said: Quiet. Hardworking. Values self-sufficiency. Owns and operates a sustainable timber business in rural Montana. Enjoys solitude.
What the profile failed to mention is that Hunter Marsh looks like God took a mountain, gave it a jaw, dressed it in flannel, and told it to scowl at anything that moved.
Six foot four. Shoulders broad enough to block out the tree line behind him.
Dark hair that's too long at the collar, a beard that he clearly trims when he remembers to, which doesn't appear to be often.
Hazel eyes shifting between green and gold in the morning light, narrowed at me with an expression that suggests my presence on his driveway is roughly as welcome as a forest fire.
Sawdust clings to his forearms. His hands are enormous, scarred, wrapped around nothing but still tense with the kind of restless energy that comes from working physical labor since dawn.
A scar runs across the back of his left hand.
Old. Healed white. The sort of thing that has a story nobody has asked about in years.
"I'm not looking for anything," he says, and his voice matches the rest of him. Low. Rough. Like gravel under boots.
My smile holds. "That's okay. I wasn't looking for a mountain. And here we are."
Something shifts in those hazel eyes. Not softening. More like reassessment. The way a man looks at a locked gate when he realizes the lock is different from what he expected.
"There's been a mistake." He says it flatly. No anger, no apology. Just a man stating what he considers to be a fact. "My sister submitted that profile without my knowledge. I didn't agree to any of this."
The mountain air is sharp and clean against my face, carrying pine and wood smoke and something darker underneath. Soil. Cold stone. The smell of a place that doesn't care whether you stay or go.
"Your sister," I repeat.
"Bette. She's..." He searches for a word. Gives up. "She did this without asking."
"So you didn't write the profile."
"No."
"Didn't approve it."
"No."
"Didn't know a woman was coming to your property today."
His jaw tightens. "Found out about thirty minutes ago."
Thirty minutes. This man found out thirty minutes ago that a stranger was arriving to potentially become his wife, and he's standing here in his driveway covered in sawdust having what is, all things considered, a remarkably civil conversation about it.
The profile may not have been his, but whoever wrote it wasn't lying. Quiet. Hardworking. Values self-sufficiency. Those parts are all clearly accurate.
"Okay." The letter goes back into my jacket pocket. "That's a problem."
"It is."
"But I'm here. I drove eleven hours from Billings after flying in from Ohio yesterday.
My rental car has a scratch that's going to cost me my deposit.
My apartment lease ended two weeks ago because I gave notice when the agency confirmed the match, which means I currently don't have a home to go back to.
" A breath. Steady. "So before you send me away, maybe we could start with coffee. "
The silence stretches. Behind me, the rental car ticks as the engine cools.
Hunter Marsh looks at me the way a man looks at a problem he wasn't prepared for and can't immediately solve.
Then his gaze drops, briefly, to my mouth.
It's fast. Involuntary. The kind of glance that a person makes before their brain catches up with their eyes and yanks them back to safer territory.
He noticed it happened. So did I. Neither of us mentions it.
"Coffee," he says.
"Please."
A beat. Then he turns toward the cabin without another word, leaving me standing in the gravel with two suitcases, an expired lease, and the growing awareness that whatever I thought this was going to be, it's going to be something else entirely.
The cabin is immaculate.
That's the first thing. Not rustic-charming in the way the profile implied, all rough edges and bachelor chaos.
This place is clean. Organized. The kitchen counters are wiped down, the floors are swept, and the woodstove in the corner is throwing steady heat that wraps around me the second the door closes.
Handmade furniture fills the open main floor.
A dining table built from what looks like reclaimed timber, sanded smooth, the grain running in patterns that catch the light.
Bookshelves against one wall, packed tight.
A leather chair by the woodstove with a reading lamp positioned at exactly the right angle, the seat cushion worn in the shape of one man's body.
Everything has a place. Everything serves a purpose. There isn't a single decorative object in the room, but somehow it doesn't feel sparse. Just intentional. Built by someone who thinks carefully about what he keeps and what he doesn't.
Hunter moves through the kitchen with the efficiency of a man who has performed this ritual a thousand times.
Coffee grinder. Pour-over. Water heated to just below boiling, not at a full roll, because he apparently has opinions about extraction temperature.
The beans smell expensive, dark and complex, which tracks with what his sister said about him driving forty-five minutes for the right roast.
The profile mentioned none of this. The profile made him sound like a caveman with an axe.
Instead, he's making me the best-smelling coffee I've encountered in my life while pointedly not making eye contact.
"Cream?"
"Black, please."
One eyebrow lifts. Just slightly. The first crack in the stone wall of his expression.
The mug he sets in front of me is handmade ceramic, heavy, glazed in a deep blue that could be the Montana sky at dusk. One mug. He doesn't pour one for himself, which means either he's already had his or he's making a point about how long he expects this visit to last.
Both are possible. Probably both are true.
"Thank you." My hands wrap around the ceramic. The warmth seeps into my palms, into my fingers that are still stiff from gripping the steering wheel through mountain switchbacks. "This is a beautiful home."
Nothing. He leans against the counter across from me with his arms crossed, watching me drink coffee at his table with the focused attention of a man cataloging every detail for later analysis.
"You can ask me," I offer.
"Ask you what."
"Whatever you're thinking. You've been staring at me for two minutes. You clearly have questions."
Another shift. That almost-reassessment again. "Why did you say yes?"
The coffee is perfect. Rich, full, no bitterness. Of course it is.
"Because the profile described a man who builds things with his own hands, lives on a mountain he loves, runs a business his grandfather started, and hasn't let anyone close in a long time.
" A sip. The mug is warm and solid. "And I've spent the last three years living in a city that was too loud, working a job that made me smaller, engaged to a man who wanted me to be quieter and less opinionated and generally less myself.
So when I read about a life that was the opposite of everything I was running from, I called the agency. "
Hunter's expression doesn't change. But his arms uncross. Slowly. The way a door opens when you stop pushing and just wait.
"Engaged," he says.
"Past tense. Very past. Ended it fourteen months ago."
"Why?"
"Because he proposed to a version of me that didn't exist, and I got tired of pretending she did."
The woodstove crackles. Outside, the wind pushes through the pines with a long, low exhale that sounds like the mountain breathing.
"That profile said I was looking for a wife."
"It did."
"I'm not."
"Your sister seems to disagree."
His jaw works. The muscle there flexes once, twice, and it's absurd that a jaw muscle is what my attention catches on, but there it is. Everything about this man is oversized. His hands. His shoulders. His stubbornness. Even his silence takes up more space than most people's conversation.
"Bette doesn't get to make that decision for me."
"No," I agree. "She doesn't. But she's not the one who drove eleven hours.
That was me. My decision. Made with clear eyes and a fully functioning brain.
" The mug goes down on the table. "So here's what I'm proposing.
Not marriage. Not yet. Not until you've decided whether you can stand having another person in your house for more than twenty minutes without developing a rash. "
That jaw again. But something else too, at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. More like the place where a smile would go if he ever let one through.
"I stay. One week. I pull my weight, I don't get in your way, and at the end of seven days, you tell me to leave or you ask me to stay longer. Your decision. No pressure from Bette, no pressure from the agency, no pressure from me."
"And if I tell you to leave right now?"
"Then I get in that rental car, I drive to the nearest town, I find a motel, and I figure out the rest from there." My chin lifts. Not a challenge. Just honesty. "But you won't."
His eyes narrow. "You're sure about that."
"You made me coffee. You didn't have to do that. A man who wants a woman off his property doesn't grind fresh beans and heat the water to a specific temperature." The mug lifts again. "This is a man who's annoyed but curious. And curiosity is all I need."
The silence that follows is long enough for me to hear the fire pop twice and a bird call something sharp from the tree line.
Hunter Marsh stands in his kitchen, looking at me with an expression I can't fully read.
Irritation, yes. But something underneath it.
Something that tracked over my mouth back in the driveway and is now very carefully avoiding a repeat offense.
"Guest room is upstairs," he says. "End of the hall. Bathroom is on the left. Towels are in the linen cabinet. Dinner's at six. I eat early."
"Okay."
"I'm up at four thirty. The saw starts at first light. If you're a late sleeper, bring earplugs."
"I'm not a late sleeper."
One more look. Long. Thorough. Starting at my boots and traveling up with the unhurried assessment of a man who is noticing everything he's noticing and is deeply unhappy about it.
Then he picks up his gloves from the counter, pulls them on, and walks out the back door without another word.
The door clicks shut. Through the kitchen window, his broad back moves toward the workshop, flannel stretched tight across shoulders that look like they could carry the whole ridge if it asked nicely.
My phone buzzes.
Bette:
How did it go? Is he there? Did he yell? He yells sometimes but he doesn't mean it.
Me:
He didn't yell. I'm staying. One week.
Bette:
ONE WEEK?? Nora that's amazing!! I knew he'd come around. What did he say?
Me:
He told me what time dinner is and where the towels are. That's basically a marriage proposal in mountain man, right?
Bette:
Oh honey. You have no idea. That man hasn't cooked for another person in eight years. If he feeds you tonight, start picking out china patterns.
The phone goes into my pocket. The coffee is still warm, still perfect, and through the window Hunter is splitting wood with an axe, each swing landing with controlled force that sends the halves flying in opposite directions.
His form is flawless. Feet set wide, weight transferring from back leg to front, the axe describing a clean arc that uses gravity instead of fighting it.
Economy of motion. No wasted energy. A man who learned this from someone who learned it from someone else, handed down through bodies and repetition until it became part of the blood.
My pulse does something inconvenient.
Fourteen months since the engagement ended.
Three years before that, slowly disappearing into a relationship that wanted me to take up less space.
Before that, a career I was good at but didn't love.
A city that got bigger while my life got smaller.
A lease renewed every year because starting over felt harder than staying put.
Until it didn't.
Until the morning I read about a timber man in Montana who built his world with his own hands, and something in my chest recognized something in his words, and before the logical part of my brain could intervene, my fingers were dialing the agency.
This could go badly. Probably will. The man clearly didn't ask for me, doesn't want me here, and is currently working through his feelings about it by assaulting firewood.
But the coffee is perfect. The cabin is clean. The guest room is at the end of the hall, and dinner is at six.
Outside, Hunter buries the axe in the chopping block, straightens, and rolls his shoulders. For one second, his head turns toward the kitchen window. Toward where I'm standing.
Our eyes meet through the glass.
He looks away first.
My suitcases are still in the car. The guest room is waiting. One week to make myself impossible to refuse.
The coffee mug goes in the sink, rinsed clean, set on the drying rack the same way everything in this cabin seems to be done: deliberately, precisely, in its proper place.
Seven days. That's all I asked for.
Something tells me I won't need all of them.